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Coming from just any 94-year-old, this teary proclamation might have seemed shocking. Coming from Colorado River folk hero Katie Lee – famous for her life-long environmental activism, melodies and modeling nude in the redrock embrace of Glen Canyon before it disappeared beneath Lake Powell – it was as high a compliment any devotee of Western letters could want. Throw in the fact that the "Ed" she spoke for is none other than her friend and fellow Glen Canyon Dam opponent, the curmudgeonly literary light Edward Abbey, and you couldn't blame filmmakers Ben Knight, Travis Rummel and Matt Stoecker, seated beside Lee on stage at the 5Point Film Festival in Carbondale, Colorado late last month, for looking a bit teary and shell-shocked themselves as they got ready to discuss the object of Lee's effusive praise: Their first feature-length documentary, DamNation.
This, a visibly moved Lee told the audience as she clutched Knight's hand, this will change everything.
The filmmakers and outdoor apparel giant Patagonia, which put $500,000 into the film, hope it will at least lead both policymakers and ordinary Americans to question whether dams really generate "clean" power, and add momentum to a movement to dismantle thousands that have outlived their usefulness.
DamNation | Trailer from FELT SOUL MEDIA on Vimeo.
From eastern Washington's Grand Coulee to Utah's Glen Canyon to the giant Snake River dams blocking salmon's access to pristine habitat in Idaho, DamNation walks viewers through the U.S.'s dam-building boom years (we now have a staggering 75,000 taller than 3 feet), explores the structures' toll on fisheries and indigenous people, and follows the return of salmon and boaters after the nation's largest-ever dam removal projects on Washington's Elwha and White Salmon rivers, starting in 2011.
Stoecker, producer and director of underwater photography, and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, the executive producer, had been pondering making a movie about dam removal for a while when they saw Eastern Rises, Knight and Rummel's lighthearted film about fly fishing in Kamchatka, at an environmental film festival early that year. "With so many other fly fishing films, it's just high fives and obnoxious fishermen," Stoecker explains. But Knight and Rummel had a gift for combining gorgeous cinematography with storytelling and character development. So when Rummel walked into the room where Chouinard and Stoecker were sipping beer, they pitched their idea. "He just kind of looked at us with a blank stare."
"We were both dumbfounded," recalls Knight, who co-directed DamNation with Rummel. "We couldn't imagine a bigger honor. But it seemed like there was no way we could do it. The idea of it, the scale of it was so daunting. So we said no." And then eventually said yes.
"Literally for a year and a half it continued to feel like a bad idea," says Knight. But as the filmmakers narrowed the list of 30 dams Chouinard and Stoecker had compiled to just a handful, and traversed the country in two tricked-out Sportsmobile vans crammed to the roof with equipment, gathering stories and footage (Knight and Rummel put 9,000 miles on the one they borrowed from a friend), the unwieldy beast of a topic began to crystallize into something more digestible.
Getting just the right footage, though, involved yet more "bad ideas." Like hiding in a hastily-built blind to get a shot of Washington's Condit Dam exploding after being denied permission to film the historic deconstruction. Like attempting to kayak through a series of locks on the Snake River meant to help gigantic industrial barges pass through the river's dams, again without permission. Like painting a giant cut-on-dotted-line set of scissors and dashes on California's Matilija Dam in the dead of night, definitely without permission (the filmmakers are mum on whether they were or weren't directly involved).
These moments of levity form the film's loose backbone, and along with Knight's narration, provide the audience with an accessible, humorous path through collected archival footage and interviews with author David James Duncan, Katie Lee, tribal elders, dam operators, government employees and dam scholars that ultimately arrives at the transformation the filmmakers themselves were most affected by: Just how rapidly a river can recover after being loosed from its dams.
"I had no idea how powerful that moment would be, standing there watching and hearing those folks yelling and screaming," Knight says of filming the first party of rafters and kayakers to run the free-flowing White Salmon.
And when the filmmakers returned to the Elwha just a year and a half after seeing salmon languishing and dying below its dams, they found chinook hurling themselves up a waterfall to reach their ancestral spawning grounds as if the concrete walls had never been. "I got goosebumps everywhere when I saw that," Stoecker says. "Travis and I spent two days filming, and literally every time they jumped, we were pumping our fists in the air. We were so excited and happy for them."
Knight is pragmatic about the long-term impact these inspiring visions will have on audiences. "I'm not expecting anyone to go out and be an activist after seeing the movie," he says. "But it's exciting just to know that they'll go home caring a little more, and the next time they see a dam, they might wonder what kind of effects it's having on their own watershed."
That sentiment fits well with the tone of the film, which, despite its funder and clear agenda (Patagonia is using it to push a petition to take down "deadbeat dams"), is far from a radical environmentalist screed. Rummel and Knight got their start as journalists in Telluride, Colorado, and told Patagonia from the get-go that they wanted to cover the issue from all sides. And though every pro-dam politician they sought for interviews turned them down, they've succeeded. This is not a film that asks us to hate dams. It's one that asks us to love rivers. Love them enough to bring them back for their own sake, and for ours.
Sarah Gilman is the associate editor of High Country News. She tweets @Sarah_Gilman
To see the film, check out this list of screening dates and venues.
For more beta on the rivers and dams of DamNation and beyond from HCN's writers, check out these links.
The Colorado River:
"Muddy Waters: Silt and the Slow Demise of Glen Canyon Dam," by Craig Childs
"New Hope for the Delta: During the worst drought in more than a century, the Colorado River may flow to the sea once more," by Matt Jenkins
"The Efficiency Paradox: Why water conservation along the Colorado River — a much-vaunted silver bullet for the West's coming era of shortage — could have devastating environmental costs," by Matt Jenkins
"One Tough Sucker: The razorback sucker evolved in a wild Colorado River. Now, humans are its biggest problem -- and its only hope," by Hilary Rosner
The Columbia and Snake:
"Salmon Justice: An interview with U.S. District Judge Jim Redden, who's given uncooperative federal agencies clear warning: Submit a viable salmon restoration plan for the Snake/Columbia River Basin, or face the possible breaching of four major dams," by Ken Olsen
"Salmon Salvation: Will a new political order be enough to finally bring the dams down?" by Ken Olsen
"Columbia Basin (Political) Science: A look at the Bonneville Power Administration's influence on salmon research," by Steve Hawley
The Elwha:
"River of dreams: The 30-year struggle to resurrect Washington's Elwha River and one of its spectacular salmon runs," by Adam Burke
"Rebuilding a river as Washington's Elwha dams come down," by Kim Todd
The White Salmon:
"Kayaking memories on the White Salmon River," by Mike Barenti
"Dooming a dam saves dollars," by Rebecca Clarren
The Klamath:
"Peace on the Klamath: The enemies in the West's most vicious water war have finally reached a ceasefire. This is the story of how it happened," by Matt Jenkins
And a few more on the complexities of dams and dam removal:
"Into thin air? Global warming has spawned a call for new dams — but there may not be any water to fill them," by Matt Jenkins
"A downside to downing dams? Freeing up stopped rivers isn't always the panacea one might expect," by Michelle Nijhuis
"Lost Opportunity: Remediating a Superfund sacrifice zone on Montana's Clark Fork river," by Brad Tyer
(And if you've managed to stick with me this long, your reward/moment of Zen is to watch part of one of Knight and Rummel's first movies, a crazy little number about fly fishermen sprinting after roosterfish somewhere in Baja. Roosterfish, for those not in the know, "are the Elizabeth Hurley of fish. They are SO hot. But at the same time, they command respect.")]]>
In retrospect, it surprised few people that Rincon Mountain, the amphitheatrical scarp that holds La Conchita in its perilous embrace, exploded in a thunderous current of earth and debris that day, burying 33 homes and 10 people in a mountain of mud. The La Conchita disaster was every bit as predictable as the mudslide that killed 43 people in Oso, Wash., on March 22, 2014. But at the time there was horrified disbelief: "How could it happen that suddenly an entire hillside turns into a liquid flow of earth and rock?" wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Al Martinez in La Conchita's immediate aftermath. Just as the day after the Oso tragedy, John Pennington, head of Snohomish County's Department of Emergency Management, called Oso "a completely unforeseen slide," that "came out of nowhere."
In fact, had the residents of Vista Del Rincon Drive in La Conchita, and of Steelhead Drive in Oso, examined their hillsides with a critical eye before they collapsed, they would have seen a steep pitch covered with young vegetation, and above it the arc of a sand-colored ridge – telltale scars of recent slides. (Both hills slumped in 1995; the Washington one slid again in 2006.) In both cases, initial shock quickly turned to incredulity of a different sort: How could so many people – families with children, even – have dared to build homes against such unstable mountains?
Dangerous places in the West, tragically, are often desirable places, both because of their natural beauty and because the land is relatively cheap. Ed Keller, a University of California-Santa Barbara geology professor and the author of Natural Hazards, says that we're increasingly moving into them because the planet is getting crowded: "As the global population continues to grow, we're pushing people out into ever more marginal places," he says. Human activity exacerbates the peril: Clear-cut logging above Oso's Steelhead Drive may have hastened the hill's failure, just as irrigation atop Rincon Mountain contributed to its collapse. But both scarps had been changing shape for many thousands of years, Keller clarifies; they would have slid eventually. What the people who lived there may not have understood is that "eventually" sometimes means next week.
U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones has spent much of her career training the public in risk reduction. She believes that people play dice with geology for the same reason they use one cold winter to refute climate science: "As a society, we have fundamental science-processing issues," she says. "We want yes/no answers; we don't know how to handle uncertainty." Science estimates possibility and risk rather than offering the absolute answers we crave. That allows people "to pick the information they want to hear" and dismiss the rest.
Landslides, which in the U.S. cause an estimated $2 billion in property damage every year, present singular public-education challenges, Jones says, "because we can't pick out in a human timeframe what's going to go when." Nor is there any centralized database of precarious slopes. Seismologists plot earthquakes on a national map, but slide-prone hills only make news after they've done their worst. Some states require prospective developers to solicit reports from geologists, but they also allow builders to "shred (an unfavorable) report and go get one they like better," Jones says. Absent a geotechnical paper trail, no one knows which hillsides to monitor. "Around the country, there are plenty of slopes as dangerous as Oso and La Conchita," Jones says. "You just haven't heard about them yet because they haven't broken loose."
One such place might be East Gros Ventre Butte, which rises above Budge Drive and West Broadway in Jackson, Wyo. In early April, a ruptured water main alerted town managers that their pumphouse had shifted downhill. Budge Drive had buckled, and a bulge had risen in the parking lot of the brand-new Walgreens on West Broadway. Fearing a sudden release of the mountain, on April 9 authorities ordered residents out and businesses closed.
It's too soon, says Assistant Town Manager Roxanne DeVries Robinson, to assign blame: "Our concern right now is with life-safety issues," she says. Later, however, someone might ask whether it was safe to build under East Gros Ventre Butte at all. As George Machan, an Oregon-based geotechnical engineer, told a community meeting on April 10, several episodes of lowering the grade at the toe of the slide – most recently to build the Walgreens – likely hurried the geological process along, provoking a slow-motion landslide that might soon become a catastrophic one.
Today in La Conchita, life carries on along flower-lined Vista Del Rincon Drive, next to the buried wreckage where Jimmie Wallet dug for hours and risked arrest to try to save his family. One house sold not so long ago, a two-story with balconies, priced at less than $400,000 for four bedrooms and three baths – just a mile from where smaller houses sell for millions. It's hard not to fantasize about waking every morning to the ocean view, the seabirds, the easy, consistent surfing at a beach break just steps away. I mean, what are the odds?]]>
Maybe it is logical, though, judging from a study he recently published, in collaboration with Washington State University's Bear Center. With the goal of developing a better long-term treatment for human obesity, Corbit strayed from the status quo of testing mice and rats, which aren't great predictors of human response. Instead of trying medications on rodents, he decided to examine the genetics of grizzlies and their metabolism. The bears were the perfect fit; before hibernating each year, they become extraordinarily obese.
In the new study, Corbit and his colleagues discovered a natural state of diabetes in bears that not only serves a real biological purpose, but also is reversible. The bears' bodies effectively turn up or down their responsiveness to the hormone insulin—much, Corbit says, "like a dimmer switch." The bears are at their fattest in the late summer, sometimes consuming more than 50,000 calories and gaining up to 16 pounds in a day. But despite the weight gain, they're at their least diabetic. Their insulin dial is turned up, which helps them store fat for seven months of hibernation.
When the bear hibernates and needs to live off its fat stores, it turns its insulin responsiveness way down. The animal becomes, in human terms, like a Type 2 diabetic, and insulin-resistant. And yet, the bear is actually losing, rather than gaining, weight. Year in, year out, despite the extremes of fall gorging, then foodlessness for the entire winter, the bear's blood sugar remains consistent. It stays healthy thanks to PTEN, a unique genetic mutation (that appears in only some humans) that allows for the insulin dimmer switch.
In addition to pointing out that diabetes is a natural and temporary condition for grizzlies, the research shows that the dominant theory that human obesity and diabetes go hand-in-hand may need rethinking. Corbit is already thinking about what this could mean for how people are currently treated for the condition. "I worry that giving people insulin over the long-term may end up hurting them," he says. While injecting insulin in the bloodstream can bring down high blood sugar, it also prevents the breakdown of fat, which leads to cardiovascular problems and other serious medical issues. An alternative treatment for obesity, Corbit thinks, could lie in discovering how exactly grizzlies use the PTEN gene to control their insulin levels.
Ultimately, Corbit wrote in a New York Times op-ed last winter, drug development could take a hint from "millions of years of evolutionary experimentation." Through unique genetic mutations, animals have evolved in ways to overcome conditions that continue to afflict humans. The new grizzlies research is just one example of how we can learn from them.
"Nature has figured it out," he says. Now he just needs to find a way to translate thousands of years of evolution into a treatment for obesity. Slumbering grizzlies may have brought Corbit closer than ever.
Wyatt Orme is an editorial intern at High Country News. He tweets @wyatt_orme.]]>
Every day, the state's Department of Health releases a map of waterways so polluted that restrictions are placed on the amount and types of fish people should eat. Washington has many troubled waterways, including the industrialized Duwamish River ("River of No Return," HCN June 23, 2014). On the other side of the state, an entire section of the Spokane River has signs posted near its banks (and on the state map) warning: "Don't eat any fish."
The state has been under pressure recently from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to revise its fish consumption rate to better protect the health of people who eat locally caught fish. (The rate is a measurement of how much fish is being consumed, in order to help state officials decide how to regulate pollution accordingly. Until now, the rate has been out of date and misleadingly low.) The EPA, in turn, is being pressured thanks to a lawsuit filed last year by tribes and environmental groups, who argue that many Indians, immigrants and impoverished people eat far more fish than the state currently assumes.
Gov. Inslee agrees. "I gotta tell you, there are people who eat a lot of fish," he said at his press conference last week. Inslee announced Washington would match Oregon with the most-protective "fish consumption rate" in the nation at 175 grams per day. The new rate assumes that each Washington resident, on average, consumes a six-ounce serving of locally caught fish per day, or a little more than 11 pounds a month, and that waterways must be clean enough that levels of pollutants like mercury or PCBs accumulating in fish won't kill anyone. The current standard is based on an assumption of 6.5 grams per day, or a little more than five pounds in a year.
But moments after unveiling the higher consumption rate, Inslee proposed a tenfold weakening of the state's water quality standards that protect against cancer risk. Amid criticism, Inslee insisted there's "no backsliding" on water standards and that "there is no either-or between environmental and economic health."
The regional head of the EPA appears to think the change is backsliding. "If Washington reduces the level of cancer risk protection … tribes, certain low-income, minority communities, and other high fish consuming groups could be provided less protection than they have now," EPA's Region 10 director Dennis McLerran wrote to a state senator just days before Inslee's announcement. By increasing the fish consumption rate but rolling back the cancer risk assessment — two arcane calculations in the formula that sets water quality standards — "they are giving with one hand and taking away with the other," said Fran Wilshusen, habitat director for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
The governor's advisory team was surprised to discover there would indeed be less protection when crunching the numbers, said Kelly Susewind, special assistant to the director of the state Department of Ecology. Which is why, Susewind said, the rollback is a "hybrid" in which the standards are weakened across the board, but the department will not allow discharge (from industry or municipalities) of cancer-causing toxic at levels higher than presently permitted.
Critics of the cancer risk assessment change call it a concession to industry and municipal wastewater dischargers. The dischargers argue tougher clean water standards are prohibitively expensive and may even be unreachable with current technology. Boeing derailed former Gov. Christine Gregoire's attempt at setting a higher fish consumption rate that may have catalyzed stricter pollution standards in 2012, according to documents obtained by the independent journalist group, InvestigateWest.
"Business is worried about the economic impact" of tougher water quality standards, Susewind said. "(Companies) are looking at investing on a 20- or 30-year schedule, and they ask, 'How will I know that 10 years from now I (won't) end up with a limit I can't comply with?'" Susewind said. The governor's plan, he said, allows business more certainty.
"So the good news is that nothing is getting worse?" asked Chris Wilke, executive director of Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, a nonprofit that's been pushing for bigger improvements to water quality standards for years. "That's not why we started this process," Wilke said, referring to the quest for a more realistic (and higher) fish consumption rate that would require stricter water standards.
Wilshusen has been advocating for a more protective fish consumption rate since the mid-1990s. She praises Inslee for raising the rate, but said all the moving parts to the governor's plan, including running it through the legislature next year before it's actually implemented, make its success far from certain.
"It's like when you were a kid and ordered something from the back of a comic book," Wilshusen said. "And when the envelope comes in the mail, you open it and say, 'Hey! It didn't look like that.'"
After 25 years of work, she said, "What we got this week is disappointing."
Kevin Taylor writes from Spokane, Washington, where he does not eat the fish.]]>
But this is the real tragedy: By Sept. 27, the entire Wedge Pack of eight wolves had been killed. The collared alpha male, shot from a helicopter, was the last to go. The pack was wiped out because the rancher dug in his heels. He refused to accept any reparation for his losses, insisting instead that the state's management plan for wolves needed to be rescinded.
Under that plan, ratified in 2011 after nine elaborate public hearings across the state, ranchers may receive payment for two grown beef cattle, in the case of a confirmed wolf kill, or one calf in the case of a probable kill.
The plan also requires ranchers and the agency to attempt all possible non-lethal alternatives before they resort to killing wolves. State wildlife officials urge "livestock operators to enter into cooperative, cost-sharing agreements with the department that specify non-lethal measures." State Sen. Kevin Ranker, D, says it's "inexcusable" that the state didn't "exhaust" non-lethal methods first.
Before wolves can be taken off the endangered species list, the plan says, there must be 15 breeding pairs in existence statewide for three years. If the state hopes to reach this goal, it will certainly need to discontinue management by rifle barrel.
State agents now say they are ready to try something called Chemical Bio-scent (a smelly repellent) as a non-lethal measure. We urge them also to try a tool called Conditioned Taste Aversion, developed by biologist Lowell Nicolaus, which applies worming medicine to cow carcasses to sicken feeding wolves. In classic Pavlovian conditioning, wolves soon learn that eating beef turns their stomachs. Nicolaus has adapted this technique successfully to change the behavior of wild crows and raccoons, and also used it on captive wolves.
Yet the problem with the Wedge Pack is not so much wolves preying on cattle as it is the continued grazing of livestock on our federal estate. Especially during the summer, when the predation is highest, the rancher's cows graze on public lands. That means American taxpayers pick up some of the tab for his herd. The rancher built his ranch, yes, but not without government help.
Taxpayers subsidize tens of thousands of U.S. cattle each year, and these cattle degrade the same habitats that are required by wolves' native prey. Science shows that cattle –– an exotic species in the West –– displace deer, elk, moose and other prey species. Grazing also undercuts sound wolf management efforts.
We believe that money to subsidize cattle grazing would be better spent on wolf recovery –– restoring the range to the way it was before public-lands ranching became an institution. Ask most fans of outdoor recreation if they would rather watch wild species than cattle in wild areas, and you know what they will say.
Wolves and other large carnivores are keystone species in functioning ecosystems. A study conducted in 2012 by Oregon State University researchers concluded that the absence of carnivores -- wolves especially -- harms the land. Elk herds in Yellowstone, for instance, pruned willows and shrubs far back until gray wolves were reintroduced. An unnatural dearth of large carnivores allows herbivores to disrupt natural checks and balances.
Another scientific line would be to design an interstate, even international, conservation and management plan. Such a plan would consider wolf populations all over the West.
There is a lot at stake for taxpayers. The state's wildlife agency had to pay employees several weeks of overtime to chase down the Wedge Pack. A helicopter was in the air for four days. Sen. Ranker has asked the department for the final cost, as well as for a study of the comparative costs of lethal and non-lethal methods.
We can hardly wait to see that cost-benefit analysis. Whatever the price in blood, money and mismanaged compassion, this was the result: An entire wolf pack was killed for the sake of one ranch and its rancher.
Wolves in the West are here to stay. They don't comprehend state and national boundaries, but they understand their role in ecosystems. The Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, the law of the land in Washington for now, is all the wolves have to protect them.
Let's give the "conservation" part of the plan a fighting chance.
The writers are contributors to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News(hcn.org). Laura Ackerman is a Spokane farmer and environmental activist; Paul Lindholdt is a professor of English at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.]]>
He recently spoke with High Country News associate designer Andrew Cullen about the process of documenting the complex and emotionally challenging issue of immigration into the U.S. from Latin America. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
We recommend viewing these images in our gallery setting.
High Country News: How did you get started covering immigration in the U.S.? Was it your choice, or did Getty want you to do it?
John Moore: I started seriously looking at immigration issues back in 2010 when Arizona passed the controversial immigration law, SB 1070. Over time, I've tried to look at the story from as many different angles as I can. I speak Spanish, which helps, and I've also worked [as a photojournalist] with the military and law enforcement, which makes it easier to work with the federal border authorities.
HCN: What's driving you to continue working so heavily on this one issue?
JM: I think most everyone agrees that the immigration policy in this country has lots of problems and that something needs to be done about it. Whether they can achieve that in Washington or not is still very much up in the air. But I think it's useful to have photos that help inform the public on this issue, whether it's the thousands of miles of border fencing, or showing immigrants in the field or following anthropologists who are excavating the bones of migrants to return human remains to families in Latin America.
HCN: Is there anything you haven't been able to photograph that you wanted to –- a moment or a theme that's escaped you?
JM: This project is still very much a work in progress. I want to keep finding ways to tell the story. There are pictures that I don't have yet -- reunions between families that have been separated. I also plan on going to the Mexican-Guatemalan border, where I'll be photographing immigrants as they come up from Central America into Mexico on their journey to the U.S. It's a very difficult and dangerous juncture, crossing a river from Guatemala and then usually riding trains up through Mexico. Many people get hurt on the way. And I haven't shown that yet.
HCN: How do you gain access to people who often don't want to be photographed?
JM: Speaking the language is key. I learned Spanish in the '90s when I was assigned to Nicaragua, when I was working for the Associated Press. I try to explain to people in Spanish what I'm doing and how I think these photos are important, and I ask if I can photograph them. Many people don't want to give their names; some don't want to show their faces. I'm happy to oblige them, to help them overcome their fear and contribute to this project, which I hope informs the debate and shows the public a little bit about what it really looks like.
HCN: Immigration reform is obviously an enormously complicated issue. From your experience as a photojournalist, what do you think Americans need to know in order to move forward?
JM: I think it's important to show how militarized our border is with Mexico. I think it's important to show how much the United States needs people who are willing to work in low-skilled jobs. And I think it's important to photograph people in a way that gives them the dignity they deserve. In Brook County, Texas, I think 127 died just last year [crossing the border], and they're set to have probably more than 200 deaths this year. And that's only in one county.
If there was no need in this country for this community of workers, then they wouldn't come up. Americans are not willing to end demand for cheaply produced vegetables and fruit but many are not willing to allow these people to come and do that work. I'd like to put a human face on this issue.
HCN: You recently began documenting the legal side of immigration, especially in New York, where you've photographed naturalization ceremonies and portraits of new citizens. How has that changed your outlook?
JM: I've found great joy in these naturalization ceremonies. They're beautifully happy and moving experiences to see. [There are also] what are called homebound ceremonies, for people who can't go to a public ceremony. I'll be photographing a quadriplegic and hopefully photographing him as he studies -- of course, he can't turn pages of a book to study, he needs assistance -- and takes the oath.
HCN: Have you found that there is an aspect of the immigration process that you think is particularly important for the country to address?
JM: The path to citizenship for the populace of undocumented immigrants has been a fiasco for years. There has been no path. The border is the most secure it's ever been. I think the priority should be dealing with these millions of undocumented immigrants and bringing them out of the shadows. These people are going to pay taxes. They're already receiving many services. The economy will benefit greatly from 11 million new taxpayers.
HCN: Which of these assignments has left the biggest impression on you?
JM: I was in Texas for the exhumation of the remains of immigrants who died while crossing the border and were buried in paupers' graves. It's impossible not to be moved and saddened by the bones you see coming out of the ground, and scattered through the desert. It brings home just how dangerous this is and just how desperate people are to lead a better life.]]>
Lower Valley pays the Bondurant Post Office and some 500 other volunteer customers for allowing the utility to connect small gray boxes to their electric water heaters. Whenever electricity demand is highest across Lower Valley's grid — usually in the morning, when office lights and work machinery flip on while home water heaters are still cranking after morning showers — the utility sends a signal over the power lines to the boxes, telling the water heaters, which are major power gulpers, to turn off until energy use drops.
It's called demand response, and it represents a radical shift in the operation of the power grid. Traditionally, grid operators react to fluctuations in demand, or load, by throttling power plants and hydroelectric dams, ensuring that the amount of electricity they're producing equals the amount their customers are using at any moment. With demand response, they can also react by adjusting the load, curbing customers' energy use instead of, say, revving up a natural gas plant.
Most of today's grid, however, is antiquated and "dumb." Grid operators aren't able to monitor what's going on with it remotely and they often find out about outages only when they get irate phone calls. And the system's not equipped to allow the type of interactive exchange mentioned above. Bondurant's gray boxes are a small step toward making the grid "smart," a broad term describing a grid equipped with two-way communication and computer monitoring capabilities. As these technologies are implemented, it could revolutionize the grid in the same way that smartphones have replaced landlines. Lower Valley, together with 10 other utilities in the region, is part of an experiment called the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project to see what that looks like.
"It means having dramatically better real-time information about what's happening on the grid," says Lower Valley engineer Warren Jones. "In the future, a freezer, washing machine, or whatever, will look for times when wind power is being generated … and that's when those appliances will operate. It sounds a little pie-in-the-sky, but I don't think we're far from there, really."
Perhaps nowhere is the case for smart grid stronger than in the Pacific Northwest. For decades, the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency created to market the electricity produced by numerous large dams on the Columbia River, has bathed the region in cheap electrons, exporting the power to as far away as Montana, Wyoming and even Los Angeles. The system, including the transmission lines, substations, meters and monthly bills, was tuned to the steady hum of the dams. But growing demand for energy has bottlenecked transmission lines and pushed new energy generation, especially wind power, onto Bonneville's grid.
As recently as the mid-2000s, Bonneville had virtually no wind power in its portfolio. Spurred on by federal tax credits, the industry has since boomed, and now Bonneville's energy mix is more wind-heavy than any large utility in the country. "It's a big deal," says Lee Hall, then-Bonneville's smart-grid and demand-response manager. Clustered around the Columbia River, where the wind often blows wildly at night but dies during the day, the turbines tend to produce power exactly when Bonneville doesn't need it. Many times, the utility has had to shut them down entirely, unable to harness bursts of wind when there's not enough demand for both hydroelectric and wind power.
Bonneville, of course, wants to use all of that wind energy, "and the best way to do that is to use computer-based, automated responses" that can help shift consumer demand to those times when the wind turbines are producing the most power, Hall says.
When the Department of Energy in 2009 pledged $620 million for experimental smart grid projects, Bonneville invited utilities across the region to partner with it. Since 2010, the utilities have tapped their $89 million share of the funds to install more than 69,000 "smart meters" that send real-time energy usage information to the utility, replacing the old meters read monthly by roving utility employees. The new meters also allow the utilities to communicate with devices such as Bondurant's gray boxes. Other devices, installed on transmission poles, automatically sense power outages on the grid and re-route the flow of electricity.
Bonneville also directed Battelle, the contractor that manages the project from the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Lab, to simulate how an interactive, regional smart grid might work. Battelle calculates hypothetical prices of power based on factors like wind availability and broadcasts the signals to the utilities, which respond in a variety of ways. Portland General Electric, which tapped project funds to build a 5 MW battery bank (enough to supply about 500 homes for about 20 minutes), discharges the batteries when the signal says power is expensive and charges them when power is cheap.
For now, the effect of these experiments on the region's energy use is minimal. Lower Valley and the other small utilities taking part in the project have only installed about 1,600 water heater controls, for instance. But already, the utilities are finding reasons to embrace some of the changes.
Flathead Electric Cooperative, which serves 48,000 members in northwestern Montana, signed up some 100 volunteers to try out dishwashers, washing machines and dryers that respond to the Pacific Northwest Lab's price signal. An alert on a computer display in the volunteers' homes tells them when peak power demand, and thus peak power price, hits. Appliances are programmed to respond. The dryer's heating element will turn off while the clothes continue to tumble, for example, or the dishwasher's heat cycle will pause until peak power passes. (The volunteer has the option of overriding these responses.) These little adjustments can reduce household energy use by more than 10 percent during those periods.
That difference adds up for Flathead Electric. Because much of the area lacks natural gas lines, residents tend to heat homes and water using electricity, which slams the grid on cold mornings. Bonneville, which supplies nearly all of Flathead Electric's electricity, typically must respond to those surges in demand by throttling the turbines on its dams. To discourage those surges, Bonneville recently quadrupled the price it charges Flathead Electric when that utility's power use spikes above a specified amount.
At a series of public meetings in rural Libby, Montana, Teri Rayome-Kelly, Flathead Electric's demand-response coordinator, explained the new costs coming from Bonneville, and how the co-op was trying to flatten out peak load. The small, struggling town, once famous for asbestos mining, is the type of place one might expect resistance to smart meters and the like, with critics charging that they invade privacy or rob Americans of the freedom to run appliances whenever we want. But Rayome-Kelly didn't have any problems getting volunteers. After all, what they're really gaining is more control — over their power bill.]]>
The Stinson family property is progressive forestry incarnate: mixed-age forests, plenty of standing dead trees for bird and bug habitat, and 7- to 20-acre clear-cuts replanted with a variety of tree species. Industrial timber companies, farming trees as if they were corn, typically harvest 38-year-old Douglas fir monocrops; the Stinsons don't cut until their trees are 80 years old. The family owns nearly 1,200 acres in southwestern Washington's Lewis County, making it a "small forest landowner" under Washington state law.
Small tree farms like the Stinsons' encompass some of the most environmentally sensitive land in the state: low-lying areas close to streams and rivers. But rising property values and stagnating timber prices often tempt these landowners to sell out, opening their land to the subdivision knife. And small foresters are hampered by environmental restrictions originally designed to help the timber industry navigate the Endangered Species Act.
Now, the threat of
forests disappearing under exurbia has brought some traditional
adversaries - environmentalists and the small foresters - to the
same table. Together, they've succeeded in convincing the state
Legislature to tinker with the regulations in a way that could help
keep the foresters on the land. But as the foresters ask for more,
the environmentalists are beginning to have doubts.
The problem surfaced in 1999, when it became clear that a landmark rule designed to protect endangered salmon habitat would have a significant economic impact on small tree farms. The Forests and Fish Rules, which will regulate logging on private land in Washington until 2055, give the timber industry immunity from lawsuits over damage done by logging to endangered salmon habitat. In exchange, loggers must increase the size of the buffer zones they leave around fish-bearing streams. But because small landowners are more likely to own land in easy-to-access river valleys, the new streamside regulation hit them harder than it did the industrial companies, which mainly own land in the foothills.
Up until last September, small landowners had to file Forest and Fish permit applications every two years. Since few small landowners are well-versed in the scientific side of forestry, they had to hire consultants to fill out the hefty applications. That could cost thousands of dollars, and more if streams, new roads, or threatened or endangered species were involved, says forester Jack Kleinhoff. Now, thanks to the recent push in the Legislature, small landowners only have to apply every 15 years - a seemingly small change that has some wide-ranging repercussions. It gives those landowners one less barrier to staying in business, and regulators hope that taking the long view will help them do a better job managing their forests. "We want people to think, 'Do I want that road for just one harvest, or is it in the proper location to be able to access many harvest locations?' " says Mary McDonald, manager of the state's Small Forest Landowner Office. Rick Dunning, executive director of the Washington Farm Forestry Association, hopes that hundreds of long-term permits will be approved this year.
landowners first started working on the long-term permits in 2002,
but the plan picked up momentum when the environmentalists got on
board. "Our support (for the long-term permits) is what gave them a
green light," says Peter Goldman, executive director of the
Washington Forest Law Center. The state's environmentalists, says
Goldman, "all want to see small forest landowners succeed and be
able to conduct viable forestry." That's a big change from 10 years
ago, says Rick Dunning, when "environmentalists didn't want us to
cut a tree."
The treaty between landowners and environmentalists, however, has hit a snag as foresters look for more regulatory leniency. In addition to managing his family's property, Steve Stinson is the executive director of the Family Forest Foundation, which has spent 10 years and nearly $4 million of private, state and federal funding developing the nation's first multi-species, multi-landowner Habitat Conservation Plan. If approved by the federal government, the plan would allow landowners on 130,000 acres in Lewis County to harvest more trees next to streams, but increase the restrictions on upland logging. So far, says Stinson, the support from the environmental community for the new plan has been "tepid." "The naysayers," he says, "worry this will unravel Forests and Fish."
And it might not do any good, anyway. Becky Kelley, campaign director for the Washington Environmental Council, says it's too simplistic to blame the regulations when land is converted from forestry to development. The average small-forest landowner is in his 60s, looking ahead to retirement, estate taxes and health care bills. "The conversation that doesn't happen," says Kelley, "is, 'Aren't they going to convert anyway? And how can we address these other problems?' "
The cooperation that went into the long-term permits, says Kirk Hanson, regional director for Northwest Certified Forestry, "may have just been a flash in the pan." But the pressure on the area's forests is bound to increase: The population of the Puget Sound region is expected to grow by half again by 2040. Environmentalists and small landowners "will end up on the same page someday," says Rick Dunning, "because we both want the same things."
For a look at what both sides
don't want, one need only make the short drive from the Stinson
family forest to Chehalis, Wash., where, says Stinson, "they're
paving over the floodplain." Indeed, in December, as major floods
washed across the region, the Chehalis Wal-Mart made regional news:
It ended up 10 feet underwater.
The author writes from Lilliwaup, Washington, where her family owns a tree farm.]]>
Early this year, while the Pacific Northwest endured one of the driest winters on record, 141 countries ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to help curb global warming. The United States was not among them.
To Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle, the national no-show provided an opportunity for action on a smaller scale. "Local government can be a catalyst," he says. "In a lot of ways, we can try things that are risky and show the private sector that it is safe."
In February, Nickels challenged 141 cities to join Seattle in meeting or exceeding Kyoto Protocol guidelines, which call for a 7 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2012. One hundred and sixty-five cities from across the country, including Boston, New York, Albuquerque and Las Vegas, have now pledged their support for those goals.
And on June 13, the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a unanimous resolution, sponsored by Nickels, that urges Congress to recognize global warming as a human-induced threat and enact the Kyoto policies. It is "inevitable" that the federal government will begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Nickels says. "The sooner it happens, the better," he says. "The danger is in waiting."
Nickels says that recent strange weather events —severe hurricanes in Florida, unusually destructive mudslides in California, drought in the Pacific Northwest — have given Americans, himself included, insight into the potential impacts of global warming. "On an intellectual level, I understood that the science (of global warming) was very clear," he says. But "this winter, it really came home."
To guide Seattle's march toward the Kyoto Protocol goals, Nickels created a "Green Ribbon" task force in February. Denis Hayes, a co-founder of Earth Day, and Orin Smith, the former president and CEO of Starbucks, head the group. At the end of the year, the task force will present a plan to the mayor that sets "attainable" emissions goals for the entire city. Seattle has already reduced emissions from municipal operations by more than 60 percent and is on track to reduce net emissions to zero by the end of this year. Seattle City Light, the public electric utility, has made a major shift to cleaner power sources. About 80 percent of its energy comes from hydroelectric, which comes with its own environmental baggage. But the utility recently dropped a contract with a coal-fired plant in order to sign a deal with a wind farm. Additionally, the city's "green fleet" of municipal vehicles now runs on biodiesel and electric power.
Seattle received the 2005 City Livability Award at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and was named one of the country's five most sustainable cities on World Earth Day. Across the city, the mayor's environmental efforts receive standing ovations from crowds. Though the press has dubbed Nickels the "green mayor of the Emerald City," and he and his family recently invested in a low-flow washing machine, he says he has never considered himself an environmentalist. Protecting the environment, he says, is just an obvious way to safeguard the health of the city that he's served for over 30 years.
Although Nickels was overwhelmed by the unanimous support for his climate control resolution, he says actions need to follow those promises, even in the shadow of an unsupportive national government: "We have the opportunity to push the envelope and get people thinking, even when it is not politically popular."
The author writes from San Francisco.]]>
Average yearly moisture: 37.02 in.*
Moisture June '05-May '06: 41.53 in.
Nine consecutive days of downpour hit western Washington this January, triggering mudslides, flooding homes and closing highways. Bremerton, a town near Seattle, notched up 16.2 inches of rain during one three-week period, a quantity that normally falls over the course of 2 months. The relentless precipitation caused $7 million in damage and led the governor to declare a state of emergency.
Average moisture: 26.78 inches Moisture June '05-May '06: 31.64 in. Winds of 117 miles per hour — the strongest recorded in the state since 1995 — swept through northeastern Oregon in mid-May, upending 12 circle irrigation systems and destroying 10,000 poplars on a tree farm near Boardman. The storms followed two days of record-breaking highs, which have since cooled down to normal summer temperatures.
Average moisture: 22.33 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 28.44 in.
Average moisture: 8.76 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 10.32 in.
Average moisture: 15.85 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 14.04 in.
Ski resorts in the northern half of the state celebrated the return of good snow, as storm after storm brought some of the highest snow levels of the past decade. Southern Colorado could only look on with envy, as snowfall was scant and far below average. Springtime brought bad news for water managers all over the state, however. Unusually high temperatures, no significant snowfall in May, and snowmelt-inducing dust events quickly shriveled snowpack to below-average levels statewide (HCN, 5/29/06: Dust and Snow). By June, the remaining snow level was about five times lower than normal in the southern part of the state, only slightly higher than in 2002, one of the worst years on record for wildfires.
Average moisture: 12.71 inches
Moisture June '05- May '06: 7.54 inches
Look up the word "drought" in the dictionary, and there might be a picture of Phoenix, Ariz., on June 6, when a "haboob" — a huge dust storm — engulfed portions of that sprawling city. Phoenicians have been parched this year: No precipitation fell for a record 143 days between October 2005 and March 2006, prompting some residents to flock to beauty salons in search of miracle potions to ease dry skin. This drought, coupled with four years of below-average precipitation across much of the state, has increased the risk of wildfire; more than 4,000 acres burned in February near Payson. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared 14 out of 15 counties drought disaster areas.
Average moisture: 29.14 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 17.91 in. An early heat wave blasted Montana's Glacier National Park, setting a record high of 89 degrees on May 16. Rapid snowmelt produced water at the rate of one inch a day, which helped trigger a huge avalanche that churned 4,000 vertical feet down the slopes of Heaven's Peak.
Average moisture: 18.8 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 22.05 in.
Climate reports from Idaho this year referred repeatedly to the state's weather as a "yo-yo." Unseasonably high temperatures in May melted a big winter snowpack, which ranged from 110 to 180 percent of normal in central and southern Idaho and broke a four-year streak of below-average snowfall. Then it got cold again, and another foot of snow fell in some places. In early June, 90-degree temperatures returned, which melted more snow, prompting flood warnings in some areas and creating the best whitewater conditions in years.
Average moisture: 13.07 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 12.35 in.
Average moisture: 13.45 inches
Moisture June '05-May '06: 9.28 in.
After a dry and dusty winter, southern New Mexico chile farmers welcomed the lack of weeds and insects, and planted crops early. But by mid-May, hot, windy weather dried up almost five miles of the Middle Rio Grande, bumming out farmers and killing 38 endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows. About half the state is under drought advisory, with some areas already experiencing "severe drought emergency." And on June 5, Albuquerque hit 98 and Roswell 105 degrees — record highs for both cities. But maybe there's hope: The New Mexico Council of Churches asked all congregations to pray on Sunday, June 11, for an end to the drought. As we went to press, the prayers had not yet been answered.
Wait a minute. That doesn't sound right.
How about this? When I was a kid, my parents took me camping to instill in me a deep and abiding sense of our complete inability to afford a proper Hawaiian vacation. Yep, that's more like it.
We camped frequently, but without expensive gear, wilderness expertise or the physical fitness to muster much more than a slow shuffle through our suburban shopping mall.
There was no mountaineering, rafting, bird watching or mushroom identifying. Nuts to you, wilderness elitists, with your $300 parkas, titanium trekking poles and night-vision binoculars. We camped with a radioactive-red station wagon and a cheap plastic tent fit for a family of five.
Still, I loved playing outside all day and drinking hot chocolate by the campfire at night. I loved sharing a tent with my family and trying to fall asleep before my dad's snoring kicked into full gear. I loved testing the edibility of plants on my younger siblings. Most of all, I loved how – for a few days at least – I didn't feel anxious or out of place.
I grew up near the foothills of Washington's Cascades. Mount Rainier loomed over our subdivision. The rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula were just a few hours away. This was primo camping territory. With such pretty scenery to fill my young and impressionable eyeballs, I didn't need to summit a mountain to feel connected to the landscape.
And every one of our camping adventures – however humble – made an impression. Camping inspired my love of the outdoors – and sparked an environmentalist streak that made me, with my awkward and high-strung personality, a real hit with my peers.
My family stopped camping around the time I started high school. Maybe my dad's fuse was a little too short to handle life in the woods with hormone-addled teenagers. Maybe my mom got tired of sweating over a finicky Coleman stove. However, I didn't mind; my discovery of hair dryers and the mall temporarily overshadowed my interest in camping.
The ghosts of camping trips past didn't return until years after my college graduation, when I discovered a cache of my old journals. My childish scribbles revived the conservationist at my core, and I resolved to go to law school. My business card would read: Captain Planet, Esquire.
Yet for many years, my inner camper remained dormant. I went on day hikes. I even took up trail running. But I had become a professional who could afford to take that coveted Hawaiian vacation. I didn't want to camp; I wanted room service and a plush mattress.
So I was surprised when – about the time I turned 30 – I started wanting to sleep under the stars again. Perhaps this had something do with the fact that I spent years studying environmental law, but rarely got out into the, you know, environment.
I started camping again. With gusto. First at the established campgrounds I was used to, then at ever more remote backcountry destinations. I spent time with outdoorsy types for whom camping was merely a rest stop on the way to climb a mountain, rock face, frozen waterfall or something equally terrifying.
I was inspired by their feats, but I couldn't escape the feeling that my camping pedigree didn't measure up. I had some wilderness training. My fitness level was much less ... wheezy … than before. And for the first time in my life, I had enough money to buy the fancy gear I'd need to accompany my new outdoor adventurer buddies. But still, I hesitated: Did I really need to keep up with the rugged, ice axe-wielding Joneses?
Don't get me wrong; I thirst for adventure, too. Assuming, of course, that my first aid and cougar-wrestling certifications are current. It's just that, sometimes, I like camping for camping's sake.
I think it's enough to sit by a campfire roasting marshmallows, just as I did as a kid. It's enough to look at the stars and breathe the fresh air. It's enough to cuddle up in a sleeping bag next to my loved ones. And it's enough to know that if I hear anything that sounds even vaguely like a hungry grizzly bear, I can hightail it to my car and drive immediately back to civilization.
Maybe one day I'll own a set of crampons. Or come to appreciate expensive, bulky, figure-obliterating fleece. Or learn to identify which mushroom is most likely to liquefy my brain. But I'm grateful that my family taught me to find peace with nothing more than a tent and a tree.
Now, would you mind helping me get the marshmallow goo out of my ponytail?
Quinn Read is an attorney. When she isn't camping, she works for the environmental nonprofit Oregon Wild.]]>
But wait. The paradigm has shifted yet again! Or so it seems. In Census bureau data released May 22 on population growth in metropolitan areas, the Wall Street Journal found "Signs of a Suburban Comeback:"
The long tug of war between big cities and suburbs is tilting ever so slightly back to the land of lawns and malls. After two years of solid urban growth, more Americans are moving again to suburbs and beyond.
The fastest growing towns of over 50,000 could be considered suburban or even exurban, and many of them are in the West. A quick glance at the list would lead one to conclude that our growth patterns are heading right back to where they were before the housing crash, and that rumors of the death of suburbia were wildly exaggerated. Western 'urbs in the top 10 for percentage of growth from 2012 to 2013 include:
Compare those growth rates to, say, Seattle (2.8 percent), Denver (2.4 percent) or Phoenix proper (1.7 percent), and you can see why some folks think that the post-Recession urban influx is already ending. Well, it's not. The fact is, the urban cores are still adding a lot of people: Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, San Jose and Denver are all among the top 15 for numerical — not percentage — population gains. There's certainly no evidence that the masses are fleeing city centers for the fringes; Seattle's core is growing far faster than it's 'burbs. Nor is it clear that the folks who are moving to the suburbs are doing so for the "lawns and malls" as the Journal story implies.
Much of South Jordan, for example, looks typically suburban. Yet it's also home to Daybreak, the new urbanist community developed by the real estate arm of mining giant Rio Tinto/Kennecott, whose Bingham Canyon mine sits nearby. Daybreak is supposed to be the anti-suburb suburb. That is, it's compact, walkable, mixed-use, has 20 miles of bike paths, and has its own rail station allowing for a quick ride into the city. Nearby Lehi may not be new urbanist, but it is home to a new campus for Adobe software — meaning it might be growing thanks to a sudden surge of high-paying jobs, not because people want to get out of the city. Like South Jordan, Lehi is also hooked into the Wasatch Front commuter rail system. People may be flocking back to the suburbs, but it appears to be for different reasons than before the Recession, and the suburbs they are landing in tend to look more urban than before.
Nor are we building new suburban developments at anywhere near the rate of a few years back, an indication that a lot of the new people moving to — or having kids in — places like Goodyear or South Jordan are buying or renting existing homes. Four of the five top counties for percentage of housing units added between 2012 and 2013 are in the oil and gas patch, including three North Dakota counties and Uintah County, Utah — none of which are exactly suburban. Not one Arizona county makes the top 100. A couple rural Nevada counties do, but only because they started out with so few homes.
Only 1,114 housing units, which includes single apartments, were added to the entire state of New Mexico that year, giving it one of the most sluggish rates in the nation. Arizona and Colorado each added around 20,000 — with once booming Nevada adding 5,900 — a mere shadow of the number of the houses slapped together during the boom. Meanwhile, North Dakota added 10,000 units.
The lesson here, if there is one, is that we need to be careful when considering giant "paradigm shifts" of human behavior. Using language like "the End" of the suburbs or their "death" is rather stark, implying that huge tracts of homes would be abandoned and bulldozed back into the earth. Of course, that's not really what anyone means when they talk about these things. Proclamations of their death were meant in a more figurative way: That the dominant post-World War II growth pattern, a collective urge to move further and further away from the city center, to bigger lawns, homes and malls has been short-circuited. The newest data adds nuance to this idea, but doesn't debunk it. Even in our suburbs, we're looking for something different than before the crash, something like real communities that don't force us into our cars for several hours each day. We haven't found that ideal yet, but perhaps we're moving in that direction.
Jonathan Thompson is a senior editor at High Country News. He tweets @jonnypeace.
Thumbnail photo of South Jordan, Utah, courtesy of Flickr user Edgar Zuniga Jr.]]>


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New executive order directs agencies to take steps to recycle, save energy
About the Author
Doug Beizer is a staff writer for Federal Computer Week.
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A key contributor to Clinger-Cohen argues that federal IT has failed to take advantage of the tools that law provided.
A new report surveys the many different approaches to launching a dedicated innovation shop in government.
Nominations for 2015 are being accepted now through Dec. 23.
The flip side of default data encryption on mobile devices is that a lost or stolen device won't yield up its secrets -- an important feature for many federal employees.
A decade after the 9/11 Commission identified agencies' reluctance to share information as a dangerous shortcoming, the government is moving in the right direction.
The latest offering is intended to help agencies speed the process of deploying authorized cloud solutions.
Cartoonist John Klossner on the telltale indicators that not everything is running through the CIO.
SBA's innovation office invests in solutions to problems that don't yet exist – like the 2007 seed funding for research into an effective Ebola treatment.
The government-wide IT contract's final awards were put off a month as NASA waded through 233 proposals.
Must be the transportation system in DC I guess that is government run possibly Amtrak given the amount of support.
It looks as though this adds measures addressing mass transit, water efficiency, fleet management - and specifically calls for greenhouse gas measurement and reductions. Havnen't done a full side by side but those are some apparent additions.
Yes the order references President Bush's 13423 several times and pushes out the dates respectively along with requiring numerous updates of what can only be swag numbers at best, just some stuff for the I like me wall…
I thought George Bush Jr did this already? I did a quick look up on the internet and came up with executive order 13423, which after a quick look seems to be the same thing that Mr. Beizer is saying Obama has done. Can someone with more patience than me do a compare and post if Obama has really did something new or is he just trying to justify putting more people on his pay wagon at our expense?
All well and good but President Bush published same thing in Executive Order 13423 - in Jan 2007!
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Rambus Unveils Imerz, an End-to-End Interactive Multi-Media Platform
Rambus Inc., the Innovative Technology solutions company that brings invention to market, today unveiled a new multi-media solution that allows consumers to interact with and access "over the top" video in a personalized, immersive experience.
Rambus, which has traditionally been known for its memory architecture solutions, will publicly demonstrate its software-based, multi-media solution this week in Las Vegas, NV.
The Rambus Imerz universal platform uniquely allows for integrated multi-screen viewing, social interaction, e-commerce and access to metadata in a simple and compelling way.
"The level of access and interactivity we've been able to incorporate into our Imerz platform is unprecedented for the consumer. While other offerings have delivered aspects of interactive TV, we feel none of them have successfully integrated all of the functionality into a single, integrated offering like we have," said John Thomas, vice president of the Mobile Technology Division at Rambus.
Key components of the new platform include:
- Single point of integration for Content Rights Owners
- Unique searching interface to discover and select video content
- Seamless connection between TV and mobile, including mobile-based media remote control
- Deep social integration so that consumers can sign-on with their social networks and share, post, discuss what they're viewing from their mobile device and TV
- On-screen interactivity with video and broadcast content, including frame-by-frame synchronization of temporal/spatial tags for story-telling, product information and e-commerce
- Unparalleled communication opportunities for consumers to use in-app IM, voice chat, video chat and on-TV social viewing
- Content tagging service, including curated or live metadata logging
The Imerz media platform allows content rights owners and distributors to integrate against a single point in the cloud to distribute their content over multiple heterogeneous devices and take advantage of the full interactivity. For example, Willow.TV, a rights owner for cricket content in North America, has deployed the Imerz platform. In addition, the Willow.TV application for GoogleTV is also based on the Imerz platform and is available for download through the Google Playstore. Rambus is working with additional content rights owners, along with distributors, to incorporate additional content and new end-points.
For additional information, please visit http://www.rambus.com/imerz
SOURCE: BUSINESS WIRE ©2014 Business Wire
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Other titles in the Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography series:
German Boy: A Refugee's Story (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
What was the experience of war for a child in bombed and ravaged Germany? In this memoir, the voice of innocence is heard.
"This is great stuff," exclaims Stephen E. Ambrose.
"I love this book."
In this gripping account, a boy and his mother are wrenched from their tranquil lives to forge a path through the storm of war and the rubble of its aftermath. In the past there has been a spectrum of books and films that share other German World War II experiences. However, told from the perspective of a ten-year-old, this book is rare. The boy and his mother must prevail over hunger and despair, or die.
In the Third Reich, young Wolfgang Samuel and his family are content but alone. The father, a Luftwaffe officer, is away fighting the Allies in the West. In 1945 as Berlin and nearby communities crumble, young Wolfgang, his mother Hedy, and little sister Ingrid flee the advancing Russian army. They have no inkling of the chaos ahead. In Strasburg, a small town north of Berlin where they find refuge, Wolfgang begins to comprehend the evils the Nazi regime brought to Germany. As the Reich collapses, mother, son, and daughter flee again just ahead of the Russian charge.
In the chaos of defeat they struggle to find food and shelter. Death stalks the primitive camps that are their temporary havens, and the child becomes the family provider. Under the crushing responsibility, Wolfgang becomes his mother's and sister's mainstay. When they return to Strasburg, the Communists in control are as brutal as the Nazis. In the violent atmosphere of arbitrary arrest, rape, hunger, and fear, the boy and his mother persist. Pursued by Communist police through a fierce blizzard, they escape to the West, but even in the English zone, the constant search for food, warmth, and shelter dominates their lives, and the mother's sacrifices become the boy's nightmares.
Although this is a time of deepest despair, Wolfgang hangs on to the thinnest thread of hope. In June 1948 with the arrival of the Americans flying the Berlin Airlift, Wolfgang begins a new journey.
A refugee child's witness to Nazi defeat, Soviet occupation, and his family's debacle in war
About the Author
Wolfgang W. E. Samuel was commissioned through the Air Force ROTC at the University of Colorado and is a graduate of the National War College. He served in the U.S. Air Force for thirty years until his retirement in 1985 as a colonel. His writing has been published in several military journals, including Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly.
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Biography » General